Good News/Bad News

The good news is, the billboards in this Huffington Post feature are outstanding. The bad news? The HuffPo introduces the hilarity with a misplaced modifier.

When jetting down the highway advertisers only have seconds to catch your eye and keep your interest. We're pretty sure these billboards did just that. Also, they made us laugh.

We're pretty sure the advertisers work in offices. Doing anything but driving on the highway is discouraged.

Check out the billboards, though.

High Times

Police using Google maps struck gold--green gold, that is. The satellite photos revealed a marijuana plantation.

MSNBC didn't have quite the same good luck with a photo caption accompanying the story:

A cameraman films packages containing drugs during a news conference by police in Zurich, Switzerland. Swiss police stumbled across a large marijuana plantation while using Google Earth, the search engine company's satellite mapping software. Police said they arrested 16 people and 1.2 U.S. tons of marijuana as well as cash and valuables worth $780,000.

We get how they arrested people. But arresting the pot? And the cash and valuables? That seems excessive. Free the weed!

Thanks to Woody E. for the link.

The Taco Did It

Our friend Peter sent this along:

Downtown Los Angeles

Sitting in the food court of the Grand Central Market in downtown L.A., Stan Enriquez, 59, and his friend, Dean Qualls, watched the Simpson sentencing while listening to KFI on a small transistor radio. [APPARENTLY TRANSISTOR RADIOS COME WITH PICTURES NOW. WE DID NOT KNOW THIS.]

“He deserved it,” said Enriquez, wiping his mouth after eating a taco just shortly was escorted by deputies out of the courtroom. “He committed the crime.” [THE TACO, MEANWHILE, MAINTAINED ITS INNOCENCE. "MR. CHIMICHANGA! HE'S YOUR MAN! THE ONLY THING I'M GUILTY OF IS BEING DELICIOUS!"]

Enriquez, a former telephone line installer, said he had installed Simpson’s telephone line at his Brentwood home a year before the murder of his wife and Ron Goldman.

“I feel bad about it,” Enriquez said. “Basically, they’re trying to recover stolen items from thieves and then you let the thieves prosecute you. It doesn’t make any sense.” Both men, from Santa Monica, said the judge was hard on Simpson.

"She was a hanging judge,” Qualls said.

A Housekeeping Matter

Karen S. sent us this horrific example of a misplaced modifier that would be comical if it weren't so sad.

District Attorney Lynne Abraham says any of the nine could have foreseen the horrific fate of the girl, whose emaciated body was found in her mother's squalid house covered with bone-deep, maggot-infested bedsores in August 2006.

As written, the sentence says the house was covered with nasty bedsores. We've heard of houses with good bones, but that not what happened here.

Here's a better way to say what the writer undoubtedly meant:

District Attorney Lynne Abraham says any of the nine could have foreseen the horrific fate of the girl, whose body was found in her mother's house in 2006. The emaciated girl was covered with bone-deep, maggot infested bedsores.

Grammar and Clarity

Every so often, you read posts by linguistic types arguing that grammar and clarity have nothing to do with each other. Sometimes, that's true. Even though "I feel badly" isn't grammatically correct, its meaning is clear enough.

We just read, however, that gun violence costs us $100 million a year. How much of that could we have avoided had the Founding Fathers been a bit more careful with their modifiers, or if earlier scribes had left the original punctuation intact?

This graphic comes from the Virginian-Pilot. Click here for the story.

To all those who argue that grammar and clarity are separate pursuits, we respond with this example. How long will the dispute go on?

The thing is, people rarely intend to be unclear with their writing and speech. The rules of grammar do, however, give a good framework for determining meaning. When the author of a statement is no longer alive to explain it, we can apply the rules and translate as well as we can. When those rules aren't followed, it becomes guesswork.

Good grammar doesn't guarantee you're saying anything worth reading. But we can't think of a better way to ensure people your words are understood.

Crappy Captions: Craptions

Bill G. sends this along from the Washington Post's Web site:



"The article reports that U.S. Rep. Thomas M. Davis III announced on Jan. 30 that he will retire from Congress at the end of the year," Bill writes. "The caption on the photo does a poor job of conveying this to the reader and it would likely lead the reader to draw the wrong conclusion. The caption says, 'Seven-term U.S. Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) announced plans to retire on Jan. 30, 2008.'"

Indeed. It'd be a little bit stilted, but the caption should have read: "Seven-term U.S. Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) announced on Jan. 30 his plans to retire at the end of the year." And then he should have asked the woman standing next to him why she looked so happy about that news.

If a Goat Had My Bagels

... I'd hunt him down, too:

Woman seeks lost pet goat with bagels
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BENSALEM, Pa. -- A Bensalem woman has been walking around in the snow with a bucket of bagels and goat feed trying to locate her lost pet Buckwheat. Iris Star said Buckwheat apparently worked her way through a metal cattle fence on Saturday and wandered off from the three-acre property where she has lived for 10 years.

Police have been getting reports of the goat ramming front doors with its 6-inch horns and leaving messes in driveways in the area.

During Tuesday's snow, Star took her bucket to Lower Southampton Township, the area of the latest sightings.

Star said Buckwheat is like a pet and is just seeking companionship and warmth.

Alas, this headline should have said "Woman with bagels seeks lost pet goat." Those darned modifiers. So tricky.

That's Some Old News

This headline greeted us today on the Seattle Times' Web site:

Spokane photographer held in California killing in 1983

They waited an awfully long time to report that story. Either that, or the copyeditor should have written this:

Spokane photographer held in 1983 California killing

Justin Timberlake and Rolling Stone

Xavier sends in an amusing misplaced modifier:

"It's like, I'm over myself. I'm sure a lot of other people are too." -- Justin Timberlake

The singer shared his thoughts on the approaching end of his tour with Rolling Stone.

As Xavier points out, the Trousersnake didn't tour with Rolling Stone, the magazine, or the Rolling Stones, the band.

A Really Bad Case of Blaming the Victim

We found this today on Defamer:

Accused of raping a woman he lured to the Bahamas, other women are now coming forward to tell of their own experiences being cherry-picked from David Copperfield's audiences for backstage Q & A and photographing sessions, with one sharing a (completely innocuous yet entirely creepy) voice mail left by the magician, proposing a "very interesting opportunity for you."

So these other women are now accused of rape? What? Oh, you're saying David Copperfield is the creepy one? That makes much more sense. Sort of...

The Dangly Bits: Even Published Authors Do It

From a review in the Guardian of Anthony Loyd's "Another Bloody Love Letter":

At times, the drama is weakened by Loyd's writerly tics. At one point, he muses that "it was only a matter of time before their dumbfounded sledgehammer would recollect its sense and plough down on the ripe insurgent fruit". And he has an unfortunate habit of dangling his modifiers, the grammatical error that so amuses the pedants. Every half-dozen pages, one crops up: "A maverick of her generation, the men in my mother's life had always been more conservative than she." It's easy to forgive, but a more rigorous edit would have helped.

The rigorous edit here would have changed the sentence to read: "A maverick of her generation, my mother always dated men more conservative than she."

We love how British critics spank, then forgive. It's a nation of Super Nannies. Jolly good!

The New French Perfume

Angelo B. sends this New York Times headline:

France: Anger Over Homeless Spray

Granted, headlines are tricky because they're short. You can compress writing so much, though, that you squeeze new meaning in. It's not as though the French would be happier about this spray if it were properly housed. They're angry that the spray is being used on homeless people (who in all likelihood smell bad enough and don't need any further assaults on their dignity).

A better headline would have been: French: Don't Use Spray on Homeless

This Got Her Goat

Karen S. sends this little horror from CNN:

The severed head of a goat was found near the corner of the building stuffed inside a pink gift bag.

... and later in the story...

She said that whomever it is has her attention and that of police.

That's a remarkable gift bag that can accommodate an entire building.

As far as the second error goes, yikes. Use whom only when it's the object of a phrase -- for whom the bell tolls; to whom she sent the goat's head. In this sentence, the sender "has her attention," and is the subject.

From the Unintelligible News Files

We hate it when reporters and their copy editors try to be cute with the news at the expense of clarity. We had to read several paragraphs of the story before we knew what had happened:

Eagles' smoking ban defiance snuffed in Yakima
Associated Press

YAKIMA — Washington's ban on indoor smoking ruffled the feathers of the local Eagles' club, but now its wings have been clipped.

More than a year and a half after the state ban took effect, officials of the Yakima chapter of the Fraternal Order of Eagles have agreed to ban smoking at their club.

Translation:

The Yakima Eagles Club has finally banned smoking, more than a year and a half after the state banned tobacco indoors.

The headline looks like a triple negative: ban defiance snuffed. Say what?

Then, a misplaced modifier follows in the lead, which makes it sound as though the ban's "wings" were clipped. This could be rewritten to retain the bird metaphor: The state smoking ban ruffled the feathers of the local Eagles' club, but now, the group's wings have been clipped. Still, it's yucky.

Anyone still reading by the third paragraph can probably figure out what's happening, but this isn't how news reporting is supposed to work. Newspapers are suffering, and this sort of thing doesn't help.

She Drove Him to It

Lisa A. sent us this confusing bit from CNN:

Mom pleads not guilty to driving son, friends to kill teen

LONG BEACH, California (AP) -- A mother charged with driving her14-year-old son and six other juveniles to a skate park so they could attack another teenager pleaded not guilty Tuesday to murder.

Eva Daley is being held on $1 million bail.

Police said Eva Daley knew her son and the others planned to kill Jose Cano when she drove them to the park June 26. Cano, 13, died of stab wounds. Police said he had previously been involved in a dispute with the youths.

An angry confrontation between supporters of Daley, 30, and the slain boy broke out in the hallway outside the courtroom shortly after she entered her plea.

We don't want to make light of a sad situation, but this sure makes it sound as though the dead boy has come back to life for revenge.

Bad grammar can be a scary thing, people.

More Monkey Business

We found this headline inside MSN today:

Man smuggles monkey onto airplane in his hat

Boy howdy. That must have been some hat, to be able to accommodate a man's head, a monkey, and an airplane.

Misplaced Modifier on NYT

The New York Times chose this user comment to place on its home page this morning:

Comment by Jennifer Pedtke: “As a practicing architect . . . it just didn’t seem right that a bridge undergoing that type of work would be open to the public.”

The "as a practicing architect" phrase should modify the word "I," not "it."

Beware sentences that begin with phrases like this; they're often going to be misplaced modifiers.

What's more Glamourous than Polygamy?

The magazine, apparently. Karen sends this our way from CNN:

"My hope is that they, they'll see it, and it'll mean something," the 36-year-old said. Nicholson recently co-authored an article about leaving her polygamous community for Glamour magazine and is planning to write a book as well.

It's also amusing that she co-authored the article. That group thing must be a hard habit to break.

Steve Buscemi's Face is Funny Looking

... But not that funny looking. Karen sends this misplaced modifier from CNN:

As one of cinema's most recognizable faces, Buscemi's many credits in some way chronicle American independent film, from Jim Jarmusch's "Mystery Train" (1989) to Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs" (1992) to the Coen brothers' "Fargo" (1996).

The sentence subject is in bold. The misplaced modifier - as one of cinema's most recognizable faces - doesn't quite fit.

It's a good idea to take a second look at any sentence that starts with "As." Unless you're careful, it's pretty easy to slap on an inappropriate modifier.

From the Confusing Headline Department

We found this headline in today's Seattle P-I:

Sure, it's noisy, but the litter in Belltown has got to go

Noisy litter -- that would be annoying!

The story itself is here. Alas, the garbage doesn't really talk. But if it did, we're sure it would have interesting things to report.